ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) will hold its 5G spectrum auction on March 10, with no expected changes to this schedule. PTA expects to earn between $300 million and $700 million from the sale of 597 megahertz (MHz) across several frequency bands. PTA Director General Licensing retired brigadier Aamir Shahzad said in a briefing, "With the prescribed rate, even if 300 MHz is obtained by the telecommunication operators without any competitive bidding, the government will get $300 million." He added, "If all the 597 MHz is sold at auction at a slightly competitive rate, $700 million will be available for the government, but this scenario is less likely to happen." The auction will use a multi-round electronic clock format. The main allocation will begin on March 10, focusing first on the 2600 MHz and 3500 MHz bands. Shahzad noted that after the auction, 5G service rollout will take three to six months due to infrastructure needs. PTA Chairman Hafeezur Rehman highlighted benefits for users, saying the auction will improve quality of service and data speeds. "Around 50 million new users have been added in the system during the last five years, but only 10MHz was increased in the 2021 spectrum auction," he noted. He expects the auction to increase the Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) for telecom operators. "We started with $0.7 and now the ARPU has reached $1.3. Therefore, it is likely to increase as more data is consumed by the subscribers," he explained. Rehman projected mobile broadband speeds to improve by around 25 percent after the auction. He also said the government removed the right-of-way fee of Rs36,000 per kilometer annually to encourage fiberisation projects. He added, "Telecom operators have already placed orders for 5G equipment, while local manufacturing of 5G-enabled smartphones has commenced, with 500,000 to 600,000 units produced so far." Other incentives include spectrum sharing and relaxed regulatory terms to speed up network expansion. Operators must expand 5G coverage beyond Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, and Quetta. Also, fiber-to-site ratios must rise from 20 percent to 35 percent by 2035. Minimum download speeds for 4G will increase from 4 Mbps to 20 Mbps by 2026–27 and 50 Mbps by 2030–35. For 5G, the minimum will rise from 50 Mbps initially to 100 Mbps by 2030–35, with latency targets dropping to 35 milliseconds. Upload speeds are set at 20 percent of download speeds for both technologies.